Medical debt will no longer appear on the credit reports of New York residents. The change signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Kathy Hochul takes effect immediately.

Unpaid medical debt will no longer appear in New York residents’ credit reports under a bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday.

The law prohibits credit agencies from collecting information about or reporting medical debt. The law also bans hospitals and health care providers in the state from reporting such debt to the agencies.

New York is the second state after Colorado to enact such a law. A similar nationwide measure is being considered by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Medical debt is such a vicious cycle. It truly hits low-income earners, but it forces them to stay low-income earners because they can’t never get out from under it,” Hochul, a Democrat, said at the bill- signing ceremony in New York City.

  • mibo80
    82·
    10 months ago

    They don’t want that down there. Those folks who vote red want it that way. They like the struggle to survive… apparently.

    • Queen HawlSeraEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      There are a lot of us who haven’t moved simply because we can’t afford it

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      54·
      10 months ago

      And there’s the attitude I’m talking about.

      These policies are designed to get people who are likely to vote for Democrats to leave red states, making them even harder to flip. This is how you get a permanent Republican majority in the Senate: by pretending that the victims of Republican policy deserve it because opposing it at the national level involves work.

      • chitak166@lemmy.world
        43·
        10 months ago

        States can ignore what the senate tells them to do.

        You might not know this, but marijuana is still a schedule 1 controlled substance.